


Log Cabin/ Camping

by Deisderium



Series: Happy Steve Bingo 2018 [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: At Least Ninety Percent Fluff, Camping, Happy Steve Bingo, Happy Steve Bingo 2018, Humor, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Not Canon Compliant, Not Even a Little Canon Adjacent, Pining, Sharing a Bed, What could possibly happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 16:29:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16066967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deisderium/pseuds/Deisderium
Summary: Some of the Avengers go camping. Steve claims to be worried about how Bucky will do with the sleeping arrangements, but he's really worried about himself.





	Log Cabin/ Camping

"Camping," Steve said flatly. 

"Camping!" Natasha said. She popped her gum in her mouth and smiled. "It'll be fun." 

"For who?" Steve crossed his arms over his chest. "I spent enough time cold, wet, and miserable in a tent in the forties to know that 'camping' and 'fun' should never go together in any lexicon." 

"Well, they wouldn't, would they? One starts with C and one starts with F. Lots of words in between." Steve shot her the Captain Disappointed look, but it had never worked on Nat before, and her smile said that today wasn't going to be the first time. "Besides, who said anything about a tent? This is cabins by a lake. Running water and everything. We'll all go! It'll be a party."

"Who came up with this? Fury? Coulson? Some kind of team-building exercise?"

She smacked her gum again. It was annoying. "No, but they're going to be jealous they didn't think of it. It was Tony's idea. I'm pretty sure he thinks of it more as a friend-building exercise."

Steve let out a breath that was not quite a sigh. Tony had been on him to move into Avengers Tower, and Steve kept putting him off. He liked Tony. It was just that there were complications. "So Tony'll be there?" 

"Pepper's coming too, and Clint. Sam, for sure." 

"Look, it sounds great," he lied blatantly. "But I don't want to leave Bucky alone, and I'm sure Tony won't want him there. I'd never presume--"

"Oh bullshit, you presume all the time. Presumption is your superpower."

"My superpower is healing and muscles. Pretty sure the serum didn't do diddly squat to my personality, Nat."

"Tony invited him. James already said yes." 

Steve stared at her. Bucky was doing so, so much better than he had been, but he tended to approach social situations with extreme caution, like a cat approaching a group of other cats. Sometimes there was indifference. Sometimes there was hissing and clawing. Steve had yet to encounter a situation that led to purring. And Tony wasn't Bucky's biggest fan, for obvious reasons. You might not blame the gun that shot your parents, but you probably wouldn't want to keep it around your house.

"Tony. Invited him. And he...said yes?" 

Natasha blew a giant bubble and stared at him long enough for it to get uncomfortable. The bubble was bigger than her mouth. If he popped it, it would get on her nose. 

"Camping," he said, not bothering to try for the exclamation point. "When do we go?" 

*

"We don't have to do this," Steve muttered. 

Bucky turned a blank-eyed stare at him. He'd gained a lot of emotional range in the year since he'd come home to Steve after Project Insight fell, but he still had a difficult time emoting. It made it hard sometimes to tell whether he was staring to indicate something idiotic had just come out of Steve's mouth or because his face wasn't aiming for any particular expression at the moment. "We're almost there, Steve," he said. 

Which was true, but Steve had said it at least six times before they left the apartment as well. The apartment where everything was set up to make Bucky comfortable, the apartment where Bucky had his own room with the sightlines how he liked them and weapons hidden where they would make him feel most secure. Steve wouldn't have come into Bucky's room without knocking  _anyway,_ unless he was having a nightmare or something,but after a couple of times getting a knife pulled on him, he'd learned to make his presence known well ahead of walking in the door. 

Steve wasn't sure how Buck was going to do in a new place, was all. The therapists all emphasized the importance of routine. 

A single metal finger poked him in the shoulder. "Stop worrying," Bucky said. Steve smiled feebly in return. Bucky rolled his eyes. 

"Ta-da!" Natasha said, like she had personally created the view in front of them instead of driven them there. Steve wasn't sure how she and Sam had gotten the front seat while the two demonstrably larger people were crammed into the back, but he had spent the ride shoved up against Bucky, their legs brushing and elbows jostling with every turn. Sam wasn't even properly appreciating his legroom; he'd been asleep for at least the last hour despite Bucky resentfully nudging his seat back. 

 It was a pretty view, though. The trees were thinking about turning, a few yellow leaves here and there, but it was still warm enough that they might get to go in the lake. The cabins were not small, but not what Steve thought of as Tony levels of excessive, except one. Steve would eat his shield if anyone but Tony was staying in that one. 

Natasha pulled into the gravel parking lot, and they all uncurled from the car, stretching their legs, Sam rubbing his eyes (and surreptitiously, his back; Steve wondered exactly how hard Buck had been kicking the seat.)

Natasha's thumbs swiped furiously over the screen of her phone. "There was some kind of thing with Stark Industries. Tony and Pepper won't be here until tomorrow." 

"What about Clint?" Sam asked. 

"He's going to ride with them." Natasha slipped her phone into her jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of some kind of Japanese rice candy. She popped one into her mouth, wrapper and all. Steve eyed her suspiciously. "Come on. Keys should be in the big cabin. Pepper says that one's not locked." 

Bucky's eyebrows drew together at that, a hard black line of puzzlement at civilian choices to leave a perfectly good door unsecured, as though a lock would have stopped him for more than half a minute, tops.

They marched up the hill, gravel crunching under their feet. The breeze off the lake was cool, and tension unwound out of Steve's shoulders step by step. He turned to look at Bucky; the wind had freed tiny pieces of his hair from his ponytail, and his eyebrows had gone back to their usual resting position. He caught Steve looking, and the corners of his mouth ticked upward. Telegraphing his movement, Steve bumped his shoulder into him, and was rewarded by Buck gently shoving into him. A little piece of satisfaction unfurled in Steve's chest. Bucky might be a hissing cat to other people, but he let Steve touch him. It shouldn't have made Steve so happy.

The big cabin had a wraparound porch and a huge living room with an excellent fireplace. The wall facing the lake was nothing but floor-to-ceiling glass. Bucky twitched a little, looking at it. A big living room opened onto a kitchen more spacious than the one in their apartment, with granite countertops and shiny stainless steel appliances. 

"Roughing it," Steve muttered. 

"You were the one complaining about tents." Natasha crossed to the table, where a note had been left with several sets of keys attached to chunks of wood.

"I am definitely not going to object," Sam said. "Steve, cast your mind back to all those shitty little hotel rooms we've stayed in and just let yourself enjoy this." 

Steve hadn't thought he was really criticizing, just commenting, so he shrugged. 

Natasha picked up the note and scanned it. "Pepper says welcome. She also says Clint, Sam, and I are in cabin two, and it's a supersoldier slumber party in cabin three." She tossed Steve a key. He caught it automatically. There was a cartoon owl with glowering eyes burned into the wooden key ring. He looked suspiciously at the key Natasha was holding. It had a smiling bluebird on it. 

"Pepper did not say slumber party," Bucky said, sounding faintly scandalized. 

"I paraphrased a little," Natasha admitted. "Let's go get our stuff out of the car."

*

Cabin three was smaller than cabin two, though still two stories. Steve and Bucky lugged their suitcases up the hill past Natasha and Sam. Three was the cabin farthest away from the others, which was thoughtful. Bucky wasn't the only one to have nightmares; Steve didn't have seventy years of Hydra to pull from, but his brain managed to barf out images of drowning under the ice, exploding bodies in the forties and in the new century, Bucky on the table in Azzano, Bucky on the helicarrier, hitting him and not stopping and never coming back to himself--the variations were exhaustingly endless. So really, it was good that they were a little away from everyone else. Steve had never minded walking. It was pretty out here. Maybe they could go for a hike later on. 

There was another owl on the cabin, beneath the brass number three, glaring like the one on the key. He eyed it suspiciously as he unlocked the door. Pepper was not the kind of person who would obliquely comment on either his or Bucky's personality by way of the decor; neither was Tony, really--he'd just say it directly. Natasha absolutely was, but he didn't see how she could have done it. 

He pushed open the door only to be stopped by a solid metal hand on his shoulder. "Let me check it out first," Bucky said. 

"How about together," Steve suggested. 

Bucky's eyebrows formed a vee again. Steve didn't let himself think about the owl. Then Bucky nodded, and they moved in together, clearing the room. The downstairs was one big open room. There was a fireplace (excellent), a much-smaller kitchen than the one in the big cabin, a sofa and several overstuffed chairs around a little tv, and two doors that proved to be a half bath and a closet. The windows were much smaller than the big cabin's floor-to-ceiling affairs and had wooden blinds, thank God. Bucky moved some of the furniture around--so he could sit in it without worrying too much about anything coming in through the windows, Steve knew. This was not his first time at this particular rodeo. 

"Ready to move upstairs?' 

Bucky looked at the staircase and nodded. They moved up the narrow wooden stairs. The window at the landing was small and round and would be hard to shoot through. Bucky went through the door first and moved left. Steve followed immediately behind him, and went right. 

The windows here were like the windows downstairs: reasonably sized. There was a nice view on three sides, of the lake and the mountains, and the fourth wall had two doors that were probably a bathroom and closet, positioned over their downstairs counterparts. A little couch and sitting chair sat next to the fireplace; spread through the rest of the room were a desk, two chests of drawers, and a queen-sized bed with a colorful quilt spread on it. There was another door that Steve assumed must lead to the second bedroom, but when he opened it, there was nothing but a storage closet full of fishing rods and lifejackets and other lake type detritus. His brain made a panicky  _fweeeeee_ sort of noise. 

He looked over his shoulder. Bucky was shoving the bed over so it was at a slightly different angle to the windows, his shirt shifting across the muscles in his back. He turned to the door in front of him. Still a storage closet. 

"Just a closet over here," he said. 

"Okay. Windows?" 

"No." 

"I'm going to grab the suitcases," Bucky said, and clomped back down the stairs he'd so recently silently climbed. 

Steve sat on the bed, not sure why he was so...taken aback. Yes. That was the word for what he was feeling. Not upset.

Bucky had come back in out of the cold and moved in with Steve. It had made sense. Steve  _wanted_ him there so badly--still did, so much, even on the worst days--and practically, if something triggered a violent episode, Steve was the only one who had a chance of containing him. At least, without fatalities on either end. Steve hadn't counted on how difficult it would be, living with someone who looked so much like his friend but was not him--not just for him, but for Bucky. Steve's reactions were calibrated to a different person, one with whom he was casually physical. In the thirties and forties, Steve and Bucky had slapped each other on the back, roughhoused, thought nothing of hugging or slinging their legs on each other. It would've been hard to live in an apartment that small without at the very least not minding touching, and Steve hadn't minded at all. Quite the opposite.

Bucky wasn't like that anymore. His relationship with his own body seemed to be strained most days, much less anyone else's. It had been a struggle for Steve to not trample all over Buck's boundaries without meaning to when he first moved in. They had come so far--the car today had been hours of bumping up against each other and Bucky hadn't even drawn a knife once--but this seemed like a bridge too far into a country Buck probably didn't even want to visit. 

Steve tilted his head back until it thunked against the headboard. He was another story, but he'd always been another story. 

The pitter patter of little combat boots carrying two-hundred-plus pounds of supersoldier plus baggage, both literal and metaphorical, had him hastily pushing himself off the bed. This wasn't a problem. Bucky hadn't seemed bothered. He'd probably already figured that one of them could sleep on the couch downstairs. He didn't think it had been that big, but maybe it folded out. Or possibly there was a cot or extra mattress or something in the main cabin. It had better be Steve--Bucky would never in a million years sleep on a ground floor room with that many windows, blinds or no blinds. The only reason it would be a problem was if Steve made it a problem.

The door opened and Bucky heaved the suitcases in. His was noticeably heavier and clanked as it landed. Bucky looked at him sidelong, but Steve didn't comment. Bucky's gaze swiveled through sidelong to full on, and started to frown. "You okay?" 

"Sure," Steve said, in a voice even he could tell was not particularly okay-adjacent. He took his suitcase and started jamming clothes into dresser drawers. He could feel Bucky watching him, and he didn't want to worry him, but lord knew he didn't want to talk about it either. Bucky had enough of his own worries--he didn't need Steve's issues as well. Once his suitcase was empty, he tossed it in the closet. Bucky was putting his own clothes away, more carefully than Steve had, but he was watching him, too. 

"I'm going to check in with Nat." Now it was even worse. His voice was so studiedly casual it was clearly fake. Ugh, why was he so bad at this? "Find out about dinner." 

"Okay." Bucky put a shirt in the drawer in a deeply skeptical way. "You do that." 

* 

"So, question," Steve said, sinking onto the couch. 

"Shoot," Natasha said. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, kicking her bare feet. 

"But not literally." Sam stuck his head around the corner, then came out of the hallway. "Oh hey, Steve, I thought JB would be with you."

Steve glared at him. "No, he's still unpacking. Um, how come there's only one bedroom in our cabin?"

"That's the cabin James wanted," Natasha said. "Highest ground, most favorable layout. I showed him schematics of all of them, and that's the one he picked. I'm pretty sure he customized his arsenal based on the blueprint."

"Oh,  _unpacking_ unpacking. Explosives and tripwires and whatnot. Remind me not to go in your cabin." Sam made his way fully into the living room and threw himself into one of the chairs.

"You were never going in there anyway," Natasha murmured. 

Steve deflated a little. Cabin two was bigger than cabin three, though it otherwise looked much the same: exposed wood beams, open kitchen and living room, wrought iron light fixtures, framed pictures of trees and bodies of water. It had  _three_ bedrooms, in addition to more room downstairs. This was the backseat of the car all over again, but he couldn't argue with Bucky picking this, not if it made him feel safe enough to come here at all. 

Natasha tilted her head. "Does the bedroom bother him?" 

"He didn't say." A blush, inexorable as the tide, made its way across his face. He could feel it like sunburn. 

Both Sam and Natasha swiveled to stare at him.

"Does it bother you?" Sam asked. "All those stories about Brooklyn back in the day, you made it sound like you lived in a postage stamp."

"Not to mention all those tents in Europe you mentioned so fondly." Natasha had produced a rainbow-striped lollipop from somewhere. She peeled the plastic off and stuck it in one cheek. 

"That was a really long time ago." Steve flapped his hands to indicate the passage of time and acquisition of complicated workarounds to residual trauma. "His room at home's set up the way he likes it. I don't generally bunk over."

Natasha stared at him with her eyebrow at the angle to indicate she was giving him time to fully contemplate the scope of his dumbassery. "Why don't you wait until he says it's a problem to make it a problem? You're acting weird." She slurped on her lollipop for emphasis, producing a sound like if a swamp lived in a toilet. He knew he was being a dumbass. If it was really only concern about making Bucky uncomfortable that would be one thing, but really Steve was using Bucky's issues to mask his own discomfort, because the idea of sharing a bed with Bucky had knocked him for a loop so big it was practically planetary orbit. Oh, geez. Natasha nodded sharply, lollipop hanging out of her mouth, as if to say  _now you get it_. He frowned at her to indicate  _I have been pinky promised that you do not actually have telepathy_. She shrugged.

"Or if it's really bothering you," Sam said, "you could ask him about it. That might seem like a drastic measure, I realize--" 

"Never mind. I'm sure it's fine." Steve sounded just as convincing as he had in Owl Cabin. Sam and Natasha looked at each other. "What's the plan for dinner?" 

"Kebabs," Natasha said, with deep satisfaction. 

"Sounds fun." Bucky's voice came from immediately behind Steve's head. Steve squeaked and pivoted on the couch cushion to look at him, bashing his knee into the coffee table. Bucky gave him that dead-eyed look again, but this time Steve was certain it was for demonstrable idiocy. 

He wondered how long he'd been standing there. 

*

There was an outdoor kitchen next to the deck overlooking the water. Steve took a few minutes to look it over. There was a gas stovetop, a wood-burning oven for some reason, and a full bar set into a free-standing wall. "Amazing," he said. There was an actual sink in the countertop, with actual running water. Dear God, Tony, the cabins were less than twenty yards away.

"Yeah, but what we're using is the grill," Natasha called. The sun was low on the water, edging the trees with rose, spilling lines of gold across the water, turning Natasha's hair into a flag of crimson. 

Sam was babysitting a pile of charcoal, prodding it with a set of giant tongs, consulting a thermometer set in the grill's lid and muttering about temperature. Bucky sat at a small table with what looked like a Gerber Mark II, messily dismembering a pile of peppers and onions. The light did not neglect him either; his skin was ruddy, darker in the sunset, his hair touched with red. He'd put on a little weight since he'd been getting enough calories in him, and his shirt stretched across his back, the fabric a bridge between his shoulder blades. 

"Care to grab the meat, Steve?" Natasha had walked up to him and he hadn't even clocked her, too busy staring like an idiot.

"Nat--" He turned, hoping the sunset would at least slightly mask his blush, hoping he didn't sound as scandalized as he felt. She shouldn't just say things like that. It was fine to tease Steve--he knew he was acting a fool--but Bucky didn't need to hear that kind of--

"It's in the cooler," she said, watching him with one corner of her mouth turned up. He stared. The other corner had some kind of Lovecraftian horror hanging from it, at least four black tentacles spilling down her chin. 

"Dear God, Nat, what is that?" 

She chewed noisily. "Come on, Steve, I know they had licorice in the forties. Want one?" She offered him a plastic package, thick with the scent of anise. 

"No, thanks." He had tried to block some memories out. He fled to the cooler and knelt to dig through it. There was a ziploc bag full of chunks of steak. He was thankful he wouldn't have to watch Bucky cube a steak with a combat knife. 

"I've got the skewers," Bucky said in his ear, and he almost swallowed his tongue. 

"Gah," he replied. 

Bucky offered him a hand up. Steve took it, all too aware of the callused fingers against his palm, and let himself be pulled to his feet. Bucky looked at him, assessing. Steve wasn't sure what his face was doing, but Bucky just nodded at whatever it was. 

"Y'all need some help with the skewers?" Sam called. 

The four of them sat around the small table, assembling the kebabs. Steve relaxed a little as they talked, Sam easy as ever, Natasha a little garbled by the licorice tentacles, Steve managing to rise for at least a little while out of the cloud of tension that had circled him since he saw the bedroom. Bucky was mostly quiet, skewering his food in the precise center of each piece, but even he spoke up a few times.

Dinner was good, and Steve found himself hoping that maybe he could be normal--casual even--about the sleeping arrangements.

* 

"So, um, I'll take the couch?" Steve rubbed the back of his neck. He had found a set of spare linens in the downstairs closet in cabin three and now he was standing at the edge of the bedroom, watching Bucky check the weapons he'd hidden while Steve talked to Nat and Sam. 

At this, Bucky frowned. "You'll fuck up your back. It's too small."

"I, um. I don't want to crowd you, Buck." 

Bucky's eyebrows went full Keychain Owl. "Steve. I know my memory's like a sieve, but I remember we slept in the same bed before."

In Brooklyn sometimes in the winter, and during the war for sure. Steve had cherished and been tormented by every instance. Bucky had never--Bucky had had a date every night if he wanted it. He'd never seemed to take any of it too seriously. Steve hadn't much cared when the girls Bucky tried to set him up with inevitably lost interest, besides the sting to his vanity. He had only ever really wanted one person in the whole world until he met Peggy, and then it was two. He'd found other people attractive, but only like candle flames compared to a bonfire. He'd never resented that Bucky didn't want him back--how could he? The heart wanted what it wanted, and no amount of wishing could make it different. It was enough--more than enough--to have his friendship. But it was like pressing a bruise to sleep next to him, curled up together against the cold, a sweet pain he couldn't resist.

He took a breath, held it. "You've got your own room at home, and it seems like you need your space, pal." 

"I heard you talking to Romanoff." Bucky shot him a look that was somehow wry despite not moving noticeably more facial muscles than his last expression. "I know you're afraid I'm going to freak out. But Steve..." Bucky's face softened as he looked at him, his eyebrows retreating to their resting position. "You make me feel safe. Safer." 

Steve felt like candlewax, melting and stretching at the gift Bucky had offered him, his trust. "Really?" 

Bucky nodded, eyes fixed on Steve's. "You always have." 

There was nothing to do in the face of so much emotion besides retreat. Steve brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas in the bathroom, already feeling deeply awkward in anticipation of actually getting into bed next to Bucky. He didn't actually talk himself through it in the bathroom since Bucky would be able to hear him clearly anywhere in the cabin, but he met his own eyes in the mirror and thought,  _You can do this for him_. 

Bucky was already in bed when Steve came back into the room, on the side closest to the door. He looked at Steve like Steve was going to fight him for the position, but Steve was too busy trying not to look at Bucky's naked shoulders to worry about who was first in line with hypothetical home invaders. Bucky was...not wearing a shirt. He wore pajamas at home. He was generally pretty shy about all the scarring, so Steve tried not to stare. But right now, it was hard to help it. He licked his lips and stared at the headboard. Jesus, did Buck sleep naked now? Steve thought he actually felt a few neural connections short out.

Bucky pulled back the quilt on Steve's side of the bed, inviting. Steve caught a flash of boxers at Bucky's hip and told himself he was relieved. He slid into the bed with all the suavity of a cat splashing into a bathtub. He leaned back into the downy pillows, every muscle rigid with the effort of not crossing the invisible line in the center of the bed. Bucky deserved his own space. 

Steve reached over to the nightstand and turned out the light. It was so much darker here than in Brooklyn--no streetlights coming through the windows. It was quiet, too; Bucky's breathing was steady and even, whereas Steve wasn't sure he was pulling in enough air with every breath. 

"Steve," Bucky whispered. "You okay?" 

It was quiet; it was dark; Steve could see an angry wooden owl that even in the dark looked like it had been carved with a chainsaw on top of one of the bookshelves. Bucky didn't deserve to think he was the problem. "Not really, pal, but it's all in my head. Nothing you need to be bothered about."

The mattress pulled as Bucky turned onto his side, looking at Steve. Steve resolutely stayed on his back and stared at the terrible owl. "Really? You sound like you're about to have an asthma attack and you've been upset all day."

"I'm sorry, Buck."

Buck snorted. "Did I do something?"

"Jesus. No. It's--" Steve bit back the words "nothing to do with you," because he wasn't going to lie. 

"Sam would tell you to talk about it." 

Probably, but Steve didn't want to just shove all his emotions on Bucky like the world's shittiest badly-wrapped gift. They were Steve's problem, not Bucky's. Steve twitched as Bucky poked him in the side. 

"You don't have to always take care of me," Bucky said. "I want to take care of you too. I want to be someone you can talk to." 

Steve let out a breath he'd been holding since 1934 and set his jaw. Was he going to do this? He was. "All right, Buck. I just." He blinked against the heat in his eyelids and told his tear ducts to back the fuck up, nothing to see here, nothing worth crying about. "It's not fair to you. How I feel. You don't owe me anything." 

"How do you feel?" Bucky didn't sound upset, just curious. Steve didn't dare look at him. 

"I always." He swallowed. "You know I love you."

Bucky snorted. "Yeah." His hand--his original hand--settled on Steve's shoulder. "Remember how you let me beat the shit out of you? I figured it out. Everybody knows that. Penguins in the South Pole know that."

Steve tried to smile at the ceiling. "I always loved you. But Buck, I always wanted you, too."

Silence. Steve tilted his head. Bucky was staring at him, an expression that Steve didn't know how to parse plastered across his face. 

No one ever said that Steve Rogers backed down, even when he probably should have. "I know you don't--it's not fair to you to--"

"Steve, you dumbass," Bucky said. 

Steve turned back to the grumpy owl and silently asked whether he could suck the last fifteen minutes back into the void and start over. The owl, despite being wooden and immobile, seemed to shake its head and whisper,  _nope, you're fucked_. 

"I'm sorry," he said. 

"Jesus, don't be sorry," Bucky said. "Please look at me."

Steve heaved himself over and met Bucky's gaze. "You don't have to--"

"Don't be stupider than you have to be," Bucky said. "I don't  _have_ to do anything. I know that. But Steve...I picked this cabin. This cabin with one bedroom. I want to." 

Steve let himself stare. "You want to?" 

"Yeah. I have for a long time." Steve's eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough that he could see Buck roll his eyes. "You're Captain America, not Captain Subtle. I'm pretty sure I knew you liked me when we were kids."

Steve's stomach clenched like he'd been punched. "You never said--"

"Neither did you," Bucky said. "I think I was scared. I didn't want to fuck up what we had." 

Steve rolled onto his side. He felt like he was standing on the edge of a precipice, but it was okay. Bucky was here, with him. "I didn't either. I still don't." 

Bucky's hand was still on Steve's shoulder, steady and warm, a point of solidity Steve could focus on. "The thing is, with everything we've been and done for each other, I'm not afraid of that anymore." He swallowed, and some distant part of Steve was glad that he wasn't the only one nervous. "If we end up not liking it, we don't have to do it, right? I'm not--you can't drive me away. Not with this." 

A weight Steve hadn't known he was carrying lifted off of him. It freed him to move, finally, and he reached out and touched Bucky's face. He laid his hand along his cheekbone, more familiar than his own face some days. He thought they might both be holding their breath. Steve moved closer, not letting his eyes leave Bucky's, slow enough that if anything felt off or wrong, Bucky would have plenty of time to stop him.

Steve had imagined kissing Bucky a thousand times before, but he'd gotten all the details wrong. Bucky's face was rough with stubble--well, Steve's was too--but his lips were soft. Steve moved his hand back, lightly traversing the curve of Bucky's ear, into his hair. He'd touched Bucky's hair before, of course; when Buck had first moved in with him, he'd helped him wash it more than once. But he had never touched it like this, his fingers threaded through just to feel it. He opened his mouth wider, and Bucky's tongue moving over his bottom lip sent a thrill of desire rocketing through him. 

Bucky tugged him closer. Steve slid his hand out of Bucky's hair and down his back, along his ribcage, letting himself feel the expanse of smooth skin marked with scars. Bucky tensed a little and Steve moved his hand back up. "Is it okay?" he asked against Bucky's mouth. 

"Yeah, it's okay. Just surprised me. I don't mind it, when it's you." 

Steve's throat tightened with a surge of desperate affection, and he leaned back into their kiss. 

*

"Wait just a minute." 

Steve froze, hands stilling on Bucky's back. He really, really didn't want to do anything that would make him uncomfortable. At all. 

Bucky glanced at him, then patted him on the chest for reassurance. "No, Steve, it's fine. I just--" 

Bucky stood up and turned the grumpy owl around to face the wall. 

"Too judgmental," he said, and got back into bed, pulling Steve into the circle of his arms again.

*

Steve woke up first. He was pretty sure they had both slept through the night, which was unusual enough to warrant celebration. Bucky's eyes cracked open as he gently tried to extricate himself from the tangle of their limbs, a thin line of pale blue beneath long lashes.

"Morning." Steve decided keeping the stupidly wide grin off his mouth was hopeless. 

"Mmmmmm," Bucky said. 

"Go back to sleep," Steve said. "I'll see if I can find us some coffee." 

"Mmmmmm," Bucky said. Steve decided it sounded approving. He leaned over and kissed him, then left him to burrow back under the quilt.

Ten minutes later, Steve was walking toward the big house. There was a coffeemaker in Grumpy Owl Cabin, but no coffee. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was just peeking over the treeline and the lake was a mirror reflecting the sky. 

Natasha was sitting on the deck, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, one hand wrapped around a steaming mug, the other holding a donut.

"Good morning," Steve said, unable to stop himself from sounding like the bluebird of Made Sweet Love to My Best Friend Finally.

One perfectly arched eyebrow climbed up Natasha's forehead. "Morning." She crammed half the donut into her mouth. 

"Is there coffee in the big cabin?" Steve asked. "We don't have any in ours." 

"Pantry," Natasha said, somehow comprehensible even around a mouthful of pastry. She swallowed. "So did the cabin work out okay after all?" 

Steve looked out over the water, fighting a losing battle against both the blush sweeping his face and another giant smile. "Yeah. Turns out it was perfect." 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is the prompt. I am on the tumblr [ here](https://deisderium.tumblr.com/) if you want to say hello and/or enjoy lots of stucky reblogs.


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